Mexico Dispatch

The good news about our arrival in North America in mid-December was that, in spite of arriving too late in São Paulo for our connection and being re-routed through Washington, D.C. (not exactly on the way to Los Angeles), we were upgraded to business class. Ahhhhhh, that seat for overnight! The bad news was that when we approached the immigration officer in D.C. he enthusiastically called out to Newton, “So this is your mother!” Once Newt had corrected him, I added, “Give me a break, I just flew all night.” I keep hoping my red, teary, plane-allergy eyes and our long-stolen wedding rings could explain? This guy would have let me through with explosives strapped on, he was so embarrassed!

Everything looked up again when we saw Elise, at last. After a couple of days, the three of us drove down to Baja, Mexico, to meet up with Jake, his girlfriend Larissa and her mother, Danya, of Albany and San Diego. Jake was moving at that time from Tijuana to the town of Rosarito, where many more online poker players hang out. We had rented a beautiful condo on the ocean there for five weeks, and Elise and Danya stayed for the holiday portion. We were escaping the construction hell at our house and awaiting a California trade show for Newton in late January.

 

 

 

Oh, Christmas Tree

It can be challenging to find a good Christmas tree on December 23rd, but it turned out to be impossible in Rosarito. The last one on the lot looked like a soaked Yorkie (soaked in soggy white foam ‘snow’). We tried the Mexican Walmart (they were out of trees) and experienced something I can only call surreal, but then I am not a Walmart shopper when it’s not two days before Christmas, either. The words “crowded” and “racks of surplus” come to mind.

Giving up, we later pulled into the condo garage only to really notice for the first time a large metal sculpture of cactus that someone had deposited there. After we dragged it inside, I pulled out the colored paper, scissors and lights I had brought in lieu of ornaments. A frenzy of spirals and snowflakes ensued, and in no time we had a real Mexican Christmas tree! It was very pretty by the fire, which was absolutely necessary every evening.

 

Holidays

The six of us were especially good at going to restaurants, but I made my one signature dish – macaroni and cheese not from a box – on Christmas Eve. We were all also very good at hitting the hot tub outdoors around sunset, and very good at playing loads of games together. Jake travels with quite a stash of games, so we competed seriously through several versions of trivia; we laughed through ‘Headbandz,’ where everyone has to guess the person, place or thing written on the card on their foreheads by asking yes or no questions; we panicked through “Catch Phrase” on Jake’s cell phone, where you guess from your partner’s hints what random thing has come up, according to the category, before the increasingly rapid beeps run out. (These beeps generally coincided with heart palpitations at that point.) This was very fun at home or at beach bars until we exhausted all the good categories and had to go with ‘Words of the Dead.’ ‘Bananagrams’ crossword is always a favorite; then there was that one where you chose whether to draw, act out charades, roll letters and make a sentence, or hum - to indicate the answer. Many laughs. Oh, and there was arm wrestling.

The hot tub is hidden here; it’s on the far patio:

We drove the beautiful scenic highway south to Ensenada and the wine trail. We seemed to be the only people on the wine trail, so a man at a freezing castle-like winery opened a tiny cell, complete with iron bars, and sold us our tastings. This place below was much nicer and free from dungeon fantasies, though I wasn’t a big fan of Mexican wines; the reds seem heavy, there are few whites, and all are rather expensive. Apparently, some Russians started the vineyards in the region.

Auld Lang Syne

New Year’s Eve was mostly…just…freezing. I’m convinced it was 37˚ tops, and we went to a basically open air bar near the beach. Even just three months after freezing in Dublin, I stubbornly opted not to pack my winter coat once again. I made do with a blazer and wool scarf. Danya did pack appropriately and had to get a cab home, anyway. I toughed it out, miserable standing next to the fires they had built in table-side wheel barrows which stunk up clothing (permanently) and burned the eyes and lungs more than they warmed anyone. My one drink for the evening was a sipped shot of tequila, as everything else just sounded cold. The highlight was definitely Newton and then Jake clinging to the mechanical bull. Impressive; hilarious. Kinda sad. The gang seemed much more impervious to the cold than I and helped to jolly-up the event.

 

Mexican Extortion Story

Newton drove to Tijuana with Jake to pack up the remainder of his possessions; the other roommates had already moved out. It was only several days later that Jake discovered he had left his custom desktop computer under the table in the most beautiful high rise in Tijuana. In a panic, he called the realtor to see if the computer was still there and to arrange to pick it up. Apparently, Jake’s ‘friend’ who had held the lease had objected to this guy’s shady realtor tactics and had withheld several months of rent, unbeknownst to Jake. Now Mr. Shady wanted to recoup some of that via Jake’s computer, even though Jake had faithfully paid his share to his ‘friend.’ Now the friend said he would rather pay for Jake to get a new computer than deal with Mr. Shady Realtor any further, so Jake offered $1,000 for the realtor to allow him to go up and retrieve it. The realtor countered with $1,200. Jake said he would do the transaction only with a receipt - so there could be no pocketing of the cash which should go to the apartment’s owner.

On the appointed day, Jake, Newt, Larissa and I drove off to Tijuana to get Jake’s computer and eat in one of his favorite restaurants. The Shady Guy was surprised to see Newton there planning to go up to the flat with Jake and whispered, “Oh, just the two of us.” Newton insisted. Upstairs, Jake asked for the receipt before handing over the money, the Guy refused to give a receipt, Jake grabbed his big computer and the Realtor Guy grabbed him, Newton pushed the realtor away and Jake made it through the door, calling the realtor a crook. The script gets awkwardly funny at this point because they all three had to wait for the elevator and ride down. The Realtor kept saying he would call the police, that this was not the way “we do it in Mexico,” to which Jake and Newton happily replied, “go ahead, call the police.” Newt called Larissa and me in the lobby and said to hightail it to the car in the garage. The rendezvous at the exit gate (open, thankfully) included some sidekick thug who said we were not allowed to take anything from the apartment, a completely silent cop who would not make eye contact with anybody, the crooked realtor, who said we could never prove the computer was ours, to which Newt replied, “We could prove it in a second.” Jake was yelling from the back seat to the gate party that this guy was a con artist. It occurred to all of us in the car at about the same second that the policeman was not going to intervene for the shady guy and that the gate was open right there in front of us, so we just suddenly pulled out. Instead of enjoying a favorite Tijuana restaurant, we hit the highway and didn’t even stop in Rosarito; we sped past to a popular place…laughing, re-enacting, worrying, celebrating, with intermittent silence.

Serenity

I took advantage of our extra weeks in this peaceful place to counter the stress and personal grief caused by the construction that has been clobbering us from across the road and, even more so, on the road in front of our house. Warm sunny days made breakfast and lunch on our Mexican patio possible without the interruption of fumy delivery trucks. I could do yoga on the bedroom balcony any morning with little more than the sound of gentle ocean waves and a gorgeous view to distract me. What was missing from my pre-construction beloved routine was the more untamed experience of nature from my Brazilian balcony perch. And this precisely manicured landscaping must have been sprayed, as almost no creatures were visible anywhere apart from the wonderful gulls and fish-divers over the ocean. I came to cherish one hummingbird and the poor one-legged seagull who spent hours on the railing in the hot tub area. It’s hard to say one misses insects, but the invisible, insidious reason they were absent bothered me. Very joyous to observe were the seemingly endless, smooth rides the wet-suited surfers caught in the frigid Pacific in front of us. Some of the surfers were quite old, but then Danya and I stumbled onto some young, dashing movie-star-caliber youths peeling off their wet suits on our walk. I love beauty.

Second World

Rosarito and the surrounding area, being so close to San Diego, host many, many Americans who either have vacation houses, commute from there to work in San Diego, or live there as retirees and surfers (and online poker players). The condos are well-appointed and hardly Third World. In fact, we used our first garbage disposal and garbage compactor here, not to mention our lovely reunion with a dishwasher and a clothes dryer! Between these fancy condos along the highway is the mix of charmless local businesses, great artisan souvenir shops and quite a spate of mostly foreign-owned restaurants for the gringo clientele. We had some wonderful meals. The juxtaposition of this mammoth statue of Jesus overlooking elegant gringo mansions says it all. We wondered: if Jesus were to crash down onto the homes in a storm, would that be considered an act of God by the insurance companies?

The police are instructed, apparently, to leave the gringos alone on the highway and look the other way when gringos bar-hop with drinks-in-hand. Locals are not allowed such privilege. Of course, there are the wayward cops who prey on tourists or the clueless by stopping them on the road and devising a bribe-or-jail type scenario, but savvy gringos know what names to throw around to jeopardize the cops’ employment. Though I passed most of my time in the peaceful condo, I held on to any local flavor I found, being in Mexico and all. Best were the real taco joints and the extraordinary ceramic, glass, and metalwork sold in the artisan shops. These set Mexico apart, certainly from the Northeast of Brazil. Most of the Mexicans were truly lovely – friendly and gentle – if slightly too deferential to the rich gringos who, for certain, bring a higher standard of living to the area with their dollars.

Jake and Larissa found a great condo for the year a few minutes up the highway and moved in in early January.

Elise managed a fun long weekend visit over Martin Luther King Day. We all returned to Tijuana to take her to the border, ducking near Jake’s old apartment and having lunch at Caesar's – the birthplace of the Caesar Salad. We found their version absolutely without equal. Crossing the border is a common topic of conversation around there, as the regular car line can mean three hours of waiting (and this happened to Elise and Danya after New Year’s). Commuters carry a special pass for a faster lane, and, as Elise discovered on this second crossing, vans and special taxis are available to hasten the pedestrian experience. She rode a van all the way to Los Angeles for $25, though it was a bit duct taped-together. At the end of our stay, Newton and I found a special cab while dragging all our luggage to the pedestrian line. We were so relieved, having paid in advance, when the driver re-materialized after dropping us at the customs and immigration point. He took me to the San Diego train station and Newton to the airport. Newton was heading to Lake Tahoe to ski with his business partners ahead of their trade show, and I was off to L.A. for 6 days with my beautiful daughter. Adios, Jake and Larissa!

 

Love,

Sandy

Rome Dispatch

Newton and I met up in Athens, where we stayed at the same gorgeous location on the Aegean Sea that we always do when visiting his company’s partners there. I passed the two days in the beautiful surroundings along the water’s edge and the nearby town of Nea Makri a short bus ride away. While we had not perceived any dire evidence of hard economic times in Spain – and this was partly because we were in an area that thrives on tourism and we were traveling pristine highways that were provided by the European Union – it was pretty disconcerting to visit the Nea Makri town square. At least half of the businesses were closed up. It definitely looked and felt depressed.

We had planned a connection home through Rome so we could get a quick two-night Italian fix! We decided to stay in the Trastevere neighborhood west of the Tiber River. The ‘hotel’ was an overpriced disappointment, but life around the Piazza di San Cosimato never ceased to be lively and flavorful. We walked over a bridge and caught long afternoon shadows on the remains of Imperial Rome.


A large neighboring piazza in Trastevere provided the Felliniesque setting for our dinner. Venders were selling little lights that could be propelled right up into the night sky above the buildings, and these were flying up everywhere and descending upon the crowded Saturday night passeggiata – citizens and tourists of all ages out for the evening. Rome magic!

The next day was one serendipitous poem. Newton got a Facebook comment on his iPhone at breakfast from our Spanish friend in Natal, Carmen. She said that her favorite park in Rome is Gianicolo, overlooking the city. That turned out to be right next to us in Trastevere. The park was peaceful and beautiful and clearly making Sunday morning Romans happy.


Even better than the park’s monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi, the famed 19th century revolutionary who was instrumental in unifying Italy, is the monument to his fiery Brazilian wife, Anita. Garibaldi is also famous as a revolutionary in South America, where Anita, an accomplished horsewoman, accompanied him into battle for an attempted independent Rio Grande do Sul. Here she is escaping the surrounding Brazilian soldiers with her baby in one hand and a gun in the other. She was taken prisoner at one point and escaped again when the soldiers allowed her to search among the dead bodies for Giuseppe – whom they falsely claimed was dead. She died of malaria in Italy and is buried under this statue.

You may or may not remember that we have a food guru for Italy, Fred Plotkin. His outstanding book, Italy for the Gourmet Traveler, just opens up worlds of culinary appreciation for all regions of Italy. We had zeroed-in on a recommendation of his that turned out to be practically on the path out of Gianicolo Park!
 
Fred says: “…you should try Picolla Trattoria da Lucia, which retains the flavor of old Rome. Local wine is freshly tapped out of wooden barrels here. For pasta, order la gricia, which is a spaghetti dressed with robust olive oil mixed with lots of cheese, pepper, and pancetta (Italian bacon). This dish, a sort of eggless carbonara, was originally eaten by shepherds.”

The place is family-run. I continued my habit of sautéed chicory for every meal in Rome, along with a plate of cheeses from the Roman pantheon (the gods, not the building)! Newton was intrigued by Fred’s recommended pasta and wanted only to return for dinner and eat it again. The family, being Mediterranean and having deeply imbedded clues about how to live, forsook the additional income that would have resulted from staying open past three and serving the line-up of people waiting – and Newton again – and most likely enjoyed a beautiful Sunday evening. To die for, Fred.

We wandered back towards our hotel in a state of bliss and happened upon a fabulous little toy store in the corner of our Piazza di San Cosimato called “Citta’ del Sole.” We bought a gift for a friend’s baby, though we couldn’t resist a couple of fun gizmos for our own grown-up babies.

Later, dinner was decided upon when passing this tray of mushrooms on the street. I felt like Persephone herself eating these sautéed gifts from the underground, next to my greens, of course. We would have been happy to have stayed on in Rome indefinitely!

Love,
Sandy

Dublin Dispatch

Newton and I flew from Malaga to Dublin, Ireland, where for one night we mingled with the hordes of revelers in the Temple Bar neighborhood of the city, known for tourists and Guinness Stout. Newton was connecting to Poland the next morning for business while I had three days to go, so we made the most of a heady pub. We miraculously garnered two barstools, tried a small Guinness - which we still didn’t like despite the proper setting – settled on an old favorite, Harp, and took in the show! Our friendly bartender could, honestly, fill three pints at three draught spigots with one hand while totaling up a check with the other. The crowd was a happy international mix that overflowed into the streets with those from the other pubs. The Irish know how to share their personal charm and that of their great city, and share they do.

THREE PERFECT DAYS

DAY ONE: I walked from the hotel on Saint Stephen’s Green towards the River Liffey, which divides the city north and south, happening upon the old Gaiety Theatre almost immediately. I had already decided that I did not need a “Leopold Bloom” tour of Dublin – the Dublin odyssey of the protagonist of James Joyce’s Ulysses on a fictional June 16, 1904 – even though I had finally read Ulysses only in the last few years; however, I did stop in my tracks when I saw on the theater marquee that a stage adaptation of James Joyce’s short stories, The Dubliners, was ending that day. The matinee was starting in half an hour. I got a ticket.

In this theater piece, excerpts of funny stories and stories typifying Irish life and Irish problems – drunken men letting someone down or beating their wives – were dramatized with minimal set changes and multiple roles for the actors. I was riveted by the level of acting - to which we have sometimes been treated in the finest USA cable series. John Houston’s last film (1987) was a gorgeous adaptation of one of the stories, The Dead. This theater performance ended with the last scenes from The Dead: The wife sings a haunting traditional Irish song at the party, and this actress vocalist put us under a spell with her wistful, evocative voice. The wife then becomes inconsolably grief-stricken remembering an early admirer, Michael Furey, who used to sing the same song. She sobs to her husband, while we, the audience, become utterly still, how she spurned the young man as he was dying, how he no longer wished to live. Her cold and distant husband comes to envy the ardor of that life cut short. We are all transfixed by the actors’ command, by the poignancy of the wife’s agony on a desolate night. The matinee ends with the husband’s spoken thoughts:

“A few light taps upon the pane made me turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. I watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for me to set out on my journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. My soul swooned slowly as I heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

No one in the theater was breathing. There was no clapping. We were utterly stunned there in our theater seats, facing the truth by which only moments in life itself or great art can wake us. I will never forget that chill-bumped moment, that beat before the place exploded and we were supposed to go out into the urban afternoon and hold on to our temporary transformation for what duration we could.

I entered Saint Stephen’s Green. Coming up immediately on my left was this bust of James Joyce with the inscription: “Crossing Stephen’s, that is, my green…”

After being so moved in the theater, studying the unique Irish afternoon light on the treetops was all I was good for.

I returned each day to the Green for the beauty and the homage.

 

 

 

 

But now they drift on the still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?

           - William Butler Yeats, “The Wild Swans at Coole”

 

 

DAY TWO: I had pre-booked a tour to an ancient mound in the countryside, Newgrange, near the River Boyne. I can highly recommend Mary Gibbons Tours for fellow history buffs, as Mary lived up to her internet description beautifully. I did not even mind that she repeated herself often, also being “of a certain age.” She is a walking encyclopedia of Irish history, and Irish history has many stories to tell. I was also curious about my own Scots-Irish blood from my mother’s McCracken side. Mary described this group: James I of England lured Scottish immigrants to northern Ireland in the early 1600’s to insure that the landowners and tenants around Ulster were Protestant. Many of these Scots-Irish Presbyterians began immigrating to the thirteen American colonies in the eighteenth century, again for religious reasons. They are represented in the USA by frontiersman Davy Crockett, several presidents, and the genetically deficient of Appalachia!

I was also curious, being a fan of Yeats, to hear the dramatic tales, the “terrible beauty” of the Irish struggle for independence from England in the early 20th century.

Just as I was pro-Moorish kings and anti-Catholic Inquisition in Andalusia, I could not help being pro-ancient Celts and anti-Saint Patrick as I traversed the green, green countryside. I have heard it said that like many Native Americans, the Celts turned to drink upon losing their cosmology. And there were no snakes on the green isle; Saint Patrick was driving out the pagan nature-worshipping tradition to establish Catholicism in the fifth century. I admit that the history of murderous popes, the institutional propagating of ignorance, the excommunication of Liberation Theologists, pedophile priests, and most recently, the silencing of American nuns by the Vatican for focusing too much on poverty and economic injustice instead of abortion and same-sex marriage…have made me a bit cynical against the Catholic hierarchy. No offence intended here to the rank-and-file.

Our first stop was at the Hill of Tara, home to the earth goddess, Maeve, and coronation site of hundreds of Celtic High Kings. They were crowned at this “stone pillar” after symbolically marrying Maeve. There is a church nearby, which I declined to photograph, though the graveyard beside it was too beautiful to resist. I also opted to photograph the phallic stone over the statue of Saint Patrick.

The surrounding beauty is precisely the quintessential Irish countryside that I had set out to see.

 

 

The Hill of Tara was damaged over the years, including in 1901 when British scholars of Israel came seeking the Arc of the Covenant, believing that the Irish were part of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Spielberg hasn’t made that movie yet.

NEWGRANGE, the mound built in 3,200 B.C., older than Stonehenge, predates the arrival of the Celts from Europe by 2,600 years. It is a Neolithic structure built of stones without any mortar or other adhesive material. Those people knew how to stack! No cameras are allowed inside, but a passageway leads to a domed stone room with three bone depositories, clearly associating the mound with burial rituals. More fascinating about these Neolithic geniuses is the astronomical significance of Newgrange. Sunrise on the Winter Solstice sends the sun’s beam through the opening above the door – this clears the path from the horizon - down the corridor to illuminate the stone room. There is an annual lottery to determine which lucky ten people on each of several frigid mornings surrounding the Solstice get to travel to Newgrange and witness this 5,000-year-old wonder…weather permitting! There were almost 30,000 lottery applications submitted for the 2012 Solstice. The earth’s precession over the millennia – degrees of rotation of the axis as it moves around the zodiac – has altered where the beam hits the back wall, though the sunlight’s journey through the passage continues.

 

The spiral relief at the entrance is magnificent.

I stupidly set out on the tour without an umbrella, declining the extra weight in my bag while admiring the morning sunshine. I was roundly soaked and shivering at Newgrange. These were the only three days of our trip that could possibly encounter cooler fall weather, so I had not packed a coat. I gathered the soaking wool shawl around the soaking knit jacket and later stuck my head under the hand dryer in the bathroom to dry my dripping hair. Best part: did not catch a cold!

Mary Gibbons explained something that made sense to me: the Celts passed a rich oral tradition down through centuries; when reading and writing arrived in Ireland in the 4th century A.D., “they took to it like a fish to water.” I am clearly partial to their literature, poetry and drama - the way this Celtic oral tradition radiates through it all in such a vibrant way. My Irish friend Steve in Natal loaned me a crazy Flan O’Brian novel which I brought on the trip, The Third Policeman…a bizarre vision of hell wrapped in extraordinary language. Full disclosure: I am also partial to the literary tradition of the Brits (my father’s side!).

DAY THREE: A line appeared in a TripAdvisor.com review of one prospective Dublin hotel or another: “Don’t miss the overlooked treasure of the Chester Beatty Library at Dublin Castle.” My prospects on my last day included visiting the medieval Book of Kells at Trinity University; visiting Saint Patrick’s Cathedral; catching a commuter train to visit the craggy coast…or pursuing that little note in the hotel review. It helped that the Chester Beatty Library was a lovely, sight-filled walk from my hotel and the only free offering. My choice coincidentally led me past Saint Patrick’s AND offered not only some of the most beautiful medieval illuminated manuscripts of the Gospels in existence, but Paul’s letters to the Corinthians on shards of papyrus from the year 200, as well! Yet another miraculous day in Dublin was mine.

 

Chester Beatty was an Irish-American mining magnate who immigrated to England in 1933 and was later made an honorary Irish citizen in 1957. He applied his huge fortune to the acquisition of the world’s rarest books, emphasizing quality above all else. The collection is considered the finest private library of the 20th century. This gem of a museum was designated European Museum of the Year in 2002. It is precisely the size one can master within the window of lower back comfort and engrossed concentration duration. One floor displays historic writings and bindings from European, Middle Eastern and Asian sources; the other floor displays sacred texts from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and the other Asian religions.

It is hard to say what stands out, as the two floors walk one through the ages and the cultures in simply miraculous ways. The incredibly perfect calligraphy and miniature painting of Christian illuminated manuscripts, ancient Torahs (one featuring nearly imperceptible ‘rice-sized’ script), illuminated Korans, Persian tales of love, Chinese and Japanese narrative scrolls are something that astounds (no white-out, erasers or deletes). It is clear why the execution of the sacred texts, in particular, was considered a sacred task.

 

 

Of course the Chinese jade books, the early printed texts with Albrecht Durer’s Renaissance prints, the Spanish texts illustrated by Goya, the early elaborate leather-tooled bindings, the combining of words and visual art in general were all blow-one-away accomplishment, devotion, quality, and history captured. It was amazing.

Dublin, your spell will live forever in my bones.

Love,

Sandy